Demi Lovato reportedly hospitalized for apparent drug overdose

Demi Lovato has been hospitalized in Los Angeles after suffering what appears to be a drug overdose.

The singer’s rep has issued the following statement to Yahoo Entertainment: “Demi is awake and with her family who want to express thanks to everyone for the love, prayers and support. Some of the information being reported is incorrect and they respectfully ask for privacy and not speculation as her health and recovery is the most important thing right now.”

Without identifying the victim, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed to Yahoo that officers responded to a medical emergency at 11:40 a.m. Tuesday on the 8000 block of Laurel View Drive, Lovato’s Hollywood address.

According to TMZ, the 25-year-old was treated with Narcan, an emergency medication that blocks the effects of opioids and is used in the event of a narcotics overdose. Although TMZ reports the star suffered from an apparent heroin overdose, a source counters to Yahoo “it’s not heroin.”

Demi Lovato (Photo: Getty Images)

Fox has pulled Tuesday’s episode of Beat Shazamfeaturing a guest appearance by Lovato. “In light of recent reports, we have decided to replace the episode of Beat Shazam with another all-new episode. Our thoughts go out to Demi and her family,” the network says in a statement. Her concert Thursday in Atlantic City has also been canceled.

Lovato has always been open about her struggles with mental illness, substance abuse, eating disorders, and cutting. In her 2017 documentary, Simply Complicated, she said her first encounter with drinking and partying was in high school, and it all escalated during her Disney Channel days. She said she “loved” it. “My dad was an addict and an alcoholic. Guess I always searched for what he found in drugs and alcohol because it fulfilled him and he chose that over a family,” she said in the film.

In speaking about her struggle with addiction, the focus has been on alcohol and cocaine; she has never mentioned heroin. The only time she had been publicly tied to heroin was in 2011, when she was spotted with a sticker on her phone that read “Heroin killed the radio star.”

Otherwise, it’s always been cocaine. “I couldn’t go 30 minutes to an hour without cocaine, and I would bring it on airplanes,” Lovato told Access Hollywood in 2013. “I would smuggle it basically and just wait until everyone in first class would go to sleep, and I would do it right there. I’d sneak to the bathroom and I’d do it. That’s how difficult it got and that was even with somebody [with me]. I had a sober companion, somebody who was watching me 24/7 and living with me. I was able to hide it from them as well.”

She had been determined to find her way back to health. In 2011, she entered treatment for bipolar disorder, bulimia, self-harm, and addiction. Unfortunately, she relapsed shortly afterward but then entered a sober-living facility for a year.

Lovato seemed to know what triggered relapses. “People say that relapses happen before you use,” she told Cosmopolitan in 2015. “Your mind starts setting up the relapse before you take that drink or that first hit.” She cited her breakup with Wilmer Valderrama as particularly triggering. “The times [when he and I had] broken up, I had already gone to that place of, ‘Yeah, this is what’s happening.’ I didn’t realize it at the time, but I just wanted to sabotage everything around me so that I could sabotage myself.”

Days after announcing her relapse in her “Sober” song, she showed off a new tattoo on Instagram. She was inked with the word “Free” and tagged her photo with the message: “Love is accepting someone for who they are.”

She recently seemed to part ways with her former sober coach, business partner, and friend Mike Bayer. In June, Lovato tweeted, “You can’t always trust people who you once thought saved you” in response to a question about the biggest lessons she’d learned this year. Just a few months before, Lovato had credited Bayer with saving her life.

According to fans, she also unfollowed him in June. Earlier this month, she tweeted, in a seemingly sarcastic sentiment, “Good luck on your blog” on the same day that Bayer posted a vlog on Instagram in which he shared his “biggest pet peeve” with celebrities, though he did not name Lovato.